Mansfield and me : intertexuality and the autobiographical impulse in the graphic novel : an exegesis

Abstract

This research explores the practice of intertextuality in graphic memoirs and biographies. As Graham Allen writes, “Meaning becomes something which exists between a text and all the other texts to which it refers and relates, moving out from the independent text into a network of textual relations. The text becomes the intertext."

I have created a graphic memoir and biography employing intertextuality as a critical framework. Using Katherine Mansfield’s short stories, letters, diaries, photographs and existing biographies, I have told her story and my own. Her famous words “Oh to be a writer, a real writer” have been a touchstone as I explore how I became a “real writer” in relation to her position as an iconic New Zealand artist. In my practice and research I grapple with questions of authenticity, autobiography, and the fine line between fact and fiction. I examine the comics medium, analysing how its physiology shapes the telling of a biographical/ autobiographical story.

[Allen, Graham. Intertextuality. London: Routledge, 2000. PDF.]